Sweaty, disheveled, and shoeless, Stefan Grace and five friends from Chicago hustle across a gymnasium in the Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University in Indianapolis. Grace is as lanky as a center, but they’re not shooting hoops. In a sort of semi-improvised choreography, two teams of two or three people each are unfolding and refolding gigantic painted backdrops.
The scenery once belonged to the famed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which toured North America until the early 1960s and was a successor to Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the company that launched a ballet revolution in the early part of the 20th century. The collection features 175 pieces from 26 productions, including works designed by Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, and a bevy of Russian modernists, as well as hundreds of original costumes. Few of the scenic paintings have been viewed by contemporary audiences.
De Basil’s Ballets Russes, which eventually settled in Australia, ceased performing in 1960. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo ended its run two years later.
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If it hadn’t have been for longtime Indianapolis resident George Verdak, a remarkable figure who died in 1993, the Ballet Russe scenery collection could’ve easily wound up in the trash. Born in the early 1920s into a theatrical family in Chicago, Verdak was a dancer, choreographer, and scenic designer with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from 1943 to 1952. He later became chair of Butler University’s dance department and was a founding member and artistic director of the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre (now called Ballet Internationale), founded in 1973.
In the late 30s and early 40s Verdak attended the School of the Art Institute, where he studied under Boris Anisfeld, who’d been Diaghilev’s chief scenic painter during the early years of the Ballets Russes. But Verdak gave up painting for dance, and after a stint with Chicago Repertory Ballet he went to Hollywood–where he hoofed in several Eleanor Powell movies–and joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. He performed with ballerinas like Alexandra Danilova and Alicia Markova in works by Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, and Balanchine.
But it wasn’t always taken care of. For a couple years the materials were stored in trunks, hampers, and crates in a Quonset hut behind Hinkle Fieldhouse, where raccoons got into them. In 1973 a Butler grant enabled the 22-year-old Hubbard to inventory the backdrops. Besides taking classes, he was working full-time with the Butler Ballet as a dancer and technical director and was also helping to get the IBT off the ground. “I did them in my free time,” he says. “I’d grab as much as I could in one carload and take them to Lilly Hall. It took me about two years, pretty much working by myself.”
